I recently received a message from one of those petition organisations, which advocated sending Australian volunteers to Ebola stricken countries. I used to be an infection control nurse union rep in a detox at the time when HIV and various more infective new hepatitis bugs were becoming too obvious to ignore. Although I have not worked in the field for a year, the messages I am getting from the media and other contacts lead me to think that the problems of infection control I discuss below continue in our health-care and lay community. Chief among them are a confusion between virocides (which kill viruses) and a motley series of bacteriocides (which kill selected bacteria). I welcome comment and discussion and apologise to health professionals out there who I may have underestimated. I have written this article because I am a bit worried.

Whilst I applaud the suggestion of sending medical and nursing volunteers, I cannot support them without additional recommendations:

that countries sending volunteers do this in dedicated airlines and other transport that will be subject to rigorous infection control

that countries sending these volunteers stringently quarantine them for adequate number of weeks upon their return

Otherwise, what you are recommending will only fuel a global pandemic.

Today, Thursday 16 October 2014, WikiLeaks released a second updated version of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Intellectual Property Rights Chapter. The TPP is the world’s largest economic trade agreement that will, if it comes into force, encompass more than 40 per cent of the world’s GDP. The IP Chapter covers topics from pharmaceuticals, patent registrations and copyright issues to digital rights. Experts say it will affect freedom of information, civil liberties and access to medicines globally. The WikiLeaks release comes ahead of a Chief Negotiators’ meeting in Canberra on 19 October 2014, which is followed by what is meant to be a decisive Ministerial meeting in Sydney on 25–27 October.

Cue ‘crickets’ from establishment media until they’ve worked out their ‘traitor’ talking points and personal slurs.

If there is anyone left who bothers to look in at Catallaxy these days will see that Sinclair Davidson is so heavily compromised wth his obsessive pawnography that his blog site has become the jackboot troop of the coal industry PR machine maintaining word perfect sychronicity

There is a mooc taken by the sustainable development solutions network based on the recent pathways to deep decarbonisation report, first half on information, second half on pretending to be delegates and negotiators. This is a good way to learn more about the aforementioned report, to explain that this reports path is not sufficient, so we need to go much further than the report, and see what people from non Anglo countries think.

I had to look up “mooc”. It turns out a “mooc” or rather a MOOC is a Massive Open Online Course. When you want to use an acronym, the acronym should be written out in full the first time it is used, followed by the abbreviation in parentheses, e.g. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Thereafter use the abbreviation to your heart’s content.

Ikonoclast,
Sorry, I should have done as you suggest. There is another course offering in November on ‘planetary boundaries’ which you might be interested in as I think the focus is on limits to growth and possible ways to proceed hereon.

Even the Sunday paper had a liftout on sustainability. Perhaps the first missive should be don’t buy newspapers made from dead trees. I hope not to die soon but it had an interesting section on green funerals. 50 kg of GHG’s from an adult male cremation apparently. Another section urged us to jump in kerosene burners and eat the local livestock in out of the way restaurants. It seems sustainability is an each way proposition these days.